Pete sums up both this arc and the entirety of FW’s run in panel three. Stop. It was all a big mistake.

Obviously Pete is distraught upon discovering that his main influence and life-long idol came up with the bulk of his ideas while hitting up the early bird over at the Sizzler. Or maybe he’s just stunned to learn of foods other than pizza. Or maybe he’s just upset because Flash’s frank admission confirms what he’s secretly known about himself all along, which is that writing comic books isn’t that hard and his entire life up to this point has been a total fraud. It’s difficult to tell and the weird faces everyone’s always making do not help.

Those old Batom Comics were highly influential and the cornerstone of everyone’s youth, yet they were written by a guy who saw the whole thing as a joke and illustrated by a guy who’d rather have been doing anything else. Every single aspect of the Funkyverse is contrary to something else in the Funkyverse.

Batiuk’s angry at himself for accepting the off-the-cuff suggestion that he should name the title character Funky Winkerbean because he has the mistaken idea that Funky’s name is why people hate the strip.

To Mopey, ideas can only come when you’re at work, because creativity comes with the job, not the person. That means, once you clock-out, you’re mind stops working also, which explains everything about Mopey and his pal.

Fact 1. George Lucas has all kind of stupid stories about where he got the ideas he didn’t steal directly from Joseph Campbell. Wookiee was apparently something a taxi driver called an animal he just hit.

Fact 2. Prime Negatron is either a fused DBZ villain or, (more likely) the inevitable product of some teenage girl’s furtive Megatron/Optimus slashfic Mpreg hidden in the depths of her livejournal.

Most things start out from pretty dumb or terrible ideas. Nothing comes out fully formed. As someone who’s been a writer his entire life, Pete should understand this. Seeing as how Batiuk pretty much just goes with the first idea to pop into his head, however, Batiuk shouldn’t.